Keywords Community Circle Advisory Board

The Keywords Community Circle & Advisory Board is comprised of Louisiana-based Black public historians, creators, culture-bearers, and descendants who gather with the team twice a year for the K4BL-hosted spring meeting and summer Black History in Louisiana Workshop. The Keywords Community Circle and Advisory Board emerged as a space to bring Black public historians into connection and conversation with the project. Members are expected to use, publicize, critique, and engage the project in their own work. The Community, Ethics, and Accountability team serves as the primary bridge between the Circle and the core project team. Two gatherings also facilitate connection and engagement: the spring meeting and the summer workshop. At the time of this grant application, K4BL has completed two such gatherings (one summer, one spring). By providing an opportunity for team members and Black Louisiana historical community to engage the documents directly, we boost discoverability and dissemination of the project, continue to share editorial and design decisions, receive direct feedback from the target audience, and raise general awareness about the history under study and nature of the archive.

2024 Keywords Community Circle & Advisory Board Members

Bruce Sunpie Barnes

Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a New Orleans musician, book author and ethnographic photographer. Sunpie is also the Big Chief of the Northside Skull and Bones Gang, one the oldest Afro-Creole carnival groups in the United States which began its traditions in 1819. He is a 19-year member of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club and the band leader of the popular New Orleans musical group Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots. His latest book and cd project is entitled Le Kèr Creole [The Creole Heart] which he co-authored with Rachel Breunlin and Leroy Etienne.

Sunpie is a former National Park Service Ranger photographer, former high school biology teacher (30 years), former college football All-American, and former NFL football player (Kansas City Chiefs). Bruce Sunpie Barnes’ many careers have taken him far and wide. He has traveled to 53 countries playing his own style of what he calls Afro-Louisiana music incorporating blues, zydeco, creole jazz, gospel, work songs, Caribbean and African influenced rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist, mastering accordion, harmonica, and piano along with rubboard, talking drum, and dejembe. He learned accordion from some of the best Zydeco pioneers in Louisiana, including Fernest Arceneaux, John Delafose, and Clayton Sampy. Along with his musical group Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots, he has performed at festivals and concerts across the US and around the globe. Sunpie has currently recorded 7 critically acclaimed CDs with his compositions featured in 19 Hollywood film productions. In addition to this musical work he is also a former member of the Paul Simon Band that embarked on a 58-city world tour “Paul Simon and Sting Together”, which spanned 39 countries (2014,15 and 16). In 2018 Latin Super Star Carlos Vives invited Sunpie along with the Louisiana Sunspots to perform with him at the 51st annual Vallenato Festival in Valledupar, Columbia.

Film acting has also been an important part of his busy career. Sunpie’s work has appeared in such Hollywood productions as Point of No Return, Deja Vu, Under Cover Blues, Jonah Hex, Treme, The Big Easy, Skeleton Key, Heartless, The Gates Of Silence, Odd Girl Out, Regis and Kelly, George Lopez, NCIS New Orleans, Queen Sugar and Mayfair Witches. He is deeply involved in New Orleans parade culture and co-authored the 2015 critically acclaimed book Talk That Music Talk - Passing On Brass Band Music In New Orleans The Traditional Way. Over 300 of Sunpie’s photographs are featured in this book. Sunpie is also the co-author of Le Kèr Creole, a 128-page book on Creole language and music that is accompanied by a 15-song cd. In the art world, Sunpie’s photography has appeared in publications such as African Arts, Art in America, Smithsonian Folkways, Washington Post, South Writ Large, and many others. Exhibitions include the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Musical Home Places, Prospect 5 “ Called to Spirit” at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Jazz Museum, Bywater Biennial II, “In Company of San Malo,” Louisiana State Museum at the Cabildo, and many more.

Malik Bartholomew

Malik Bartholomew is a native African Orleanian who serves his hometown as a historian, photographer, researcher, tour guide, master storyteller, radio co-host, community griot, cultural curator, and owner of Know NOLA Tours.

He has studied history his entire life and is a proud graduate of Dillard University where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History. Post-graduation, he has since spent countless hours in the various archives in the city exploring and learning more about the unique traditions and history of the city of New Orleans. Currently, Malik is Head Archivist at Dillard and President of the Charles Deslondes branch of the Association Study of African American Life and History (ASALH®).

Malik has an undying passion for all things “New Orleans” and remains committed to exploring, researching, learning and most importantly sharing the unique history, rich culture and distinctive qualities of the city of New Orleans.

Freddi Evans

Freddi Williams Evans is an author, independent scholar and arts educator. Her book, Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans, the first comprehensive study of the location, received the 2012 Louisiana Humanities Book of the Year Award. Her research and advocacy influenced the New Orleans City Council ordinance that changed the name Beauregard Square, named after Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard in 1893, to Congo Square in 2011.

With the French edition of her book, she made presentations in Paris, France in 2012 and in Dakar and St. Louis, Senegal in 2014 sponsored by American embassies in both countries. Other international engagements include the 100 Years of Beat Festival, Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2018) and the Bordeaux Congo Square Festival in Bordeaux, France (2013).

Evans is the founder of “CongoSquareConnection.org,” an online collection that promotes the study of Congo Square. Along with numerous essays and presentations, her award-winning books for young readers include Come Sunday: A Young Readers History of Congo Square, which provides over 130 images and documents that engage and assist readers in understanding the history, significance and influence of the historic landmark. Her picture books include Hush Harbor: Praying in Secret, The Battle of New Orleans: The Drummer’s Story, and A Bus of Our Own.

As a community activist, she co-chaired the New Orleans Committee to Erect Historic Markers on the Slave Trade to Louisiana, helped to erect the UNESCO Site of Memory Middle Passage Marker and served on the New Orleans Legacy Project Committee. Working in arts education, she administered programs in the Jefferson Parish Public School System, the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center. Evans was named the Grand Griot of the 19th Annual Maafa Commemoration in New Orleans and a “Humanities Hero” by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Other recognitions include: the New Orleans Arts Council Community Arts Award in 2011, the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame Award, The HistoryMakers, and the Julia Purnell Humanitarian Award (Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.®, South Central Region) for her work in Haiti. She is a native of Madison, Mississippi and holds degrees in music and psychology from Tougaloo College, Tougaloo MS and a graduate degree in creative arts therapy (music) from Hahnemann (now Drexel) University, Philadelphia, PA.

Denise Frazier

Denise Frazier is an educator and multimedia artist who was born in Houston and has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2002. She is the Director of Programs at Prospect New Orleans, and most recently was a 2023-2024 MLK Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2016-2023, she was the assistant director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, a place-based research Center that grants fellowships and organizes public programming, immersive experiences, and collective contemplation about the bio-region stretching from Texas to Florida and its connections with other regions around the world. Her research interests currently include the Gulf South and the Anthropocene, sound studies, and the political, social, digital, natural, and built environments of the Gulf South and Circum-Caribbean. She is also the manager, co-founder and violinist/vocalist/percussionist of Les Cenelles, a string and technological interfacing ensemble that performs African Diasporic music through a prismatic lens that honors African and Indigenous ancestors and chronicles ecological realities. As a company member of Goat in the Road Productions, Frazier has used her skills as an actor and as a musical composer in immersive performances and collaborations that tell lesser-known stories surrounding sexuality, politics, liberation, and colonialism.

Frazier has participated in several boards that have supported the cultural and social ecosystem of New Orleans culture bearers. She has worked with the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, Antenna Gallery, Make Music NOLA, Goat in the Road Productions, and, more recently, the NOUS Foundation and No Dream Deferred. She has also worked with College Track New Orleans, a national college completion and access program where she advised students attending Xavier University of Louisiana, Delgado Community College, Tulane University, and Southern University of New Orleans (2010-2014). She has taught a wide variety of courses at Tulane University (Geography of the Gulf South, AfroLatinx Studies, Spanish Language), Southern University of New Orleans (Spanish Language), and Xavier University of Louisiana (Medieval Spanish Literature, Spanish Language classes, Introduction to African American Studies). Frazier is tri-lingual in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and is studying and composing music in her ancestral language, Louisiana Creole. She completed an M.A. (2004) and PhD (2009) in the Latin American Studies Department at Tulane University, studying the political and social dimensions of hip hop music and performance in early 21st century Cuba and Brazil. She is the proud parent of one son.

Shana M. griffin

Shana M. griffin is a feminist activist, independent researcher, applied sociologist, artist, and geographer. Her practice is interdisciplinary and undisciplinary, working across the fields of sociology, geography, public art, and land-use planning and within movements challenging urban displacement, carcerality, reproductive control, and gender-based violence. She engages in research, organizing projects, and art practices that attend to the lived experiences of the black Diaspora—centering the particular experiences of black women most vulnerable to the violence of poverty, incarceration, polluted environments, reproductive legislation, economic exploitation, and housing discrimination. She’s the founder of PUNCTUATE, a feminist research, art, and activist initiative foregrounding the embodied aesthetics and practices of black feminist thought; and creator of DISPLACED, a multimedia and public history project that chronicles the institutionalization of spatial residential segregation through the violence of racial slavery and displacement in New Orleans.

Shana is also the co-producer of Sooner or Later, Somebody’s Gonna Fight Back, a documentary and multimedia project on the Louisiana State Chapter of the Black Panther Party; collaborator with Gallery of the Streets, a global network of artists, activists, and scholars; and co-founder of Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, the first community land trust in New Orleans; and an abolition feminist with INCITE.

Kathe Hambrick

Kathe Hambrick is a non-profit executive, preservationist, public historian, museologist, and public speaker. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center located at Tulane University. She is the Founder of the River Road African American Museum, River Road African Burial Grounds Coalition and 2PRESERVE Consulting LLC. For the past thirty years, her research led to the preservation of five historic buildings and three historic burial grounds.

She is experienced in community relations and is a liaison to corporations, museums, governmental agencies, community leaders, and faith-based organizations. Hambrick is considered an expert on slavery in rural south Louisiana. She has been interviewed by local, national, and international media in the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.

Hambrick previously served as President of the Association of African American Museums (AAAM). In addition, she served as the Chief Curator and Director of Interpretation for the West Baton Rouge Museum for four years. Throughout her 30-year career, she has curated over 100 exhibits, including The Rural Roots of Jazz, Rural Black Doctors, and Louisiana’s first permanent exhibit about the GU272 enslaved people sold by the Jesuits of Georgetown University.

Kathe Hambrick is the author and co-author of several books: Juke Joint Men, Oh Say Can You See: Flag Paintings of Malaika Favorite, Our Roots Run Deep: History of the River Road African American Museum, and a curriculum guide entitled, Freedom’s Journey: Understanding the Underground Railroad in South Louisiana. Hambrick received a Master of Arts in Museums Studies in 2012, where she later became adjunct professor.

Gia Hamilton

Gia M. Hamilton is an applied anthropologist who employs Social Magic™ methodology to investigate land, labor and cultural production while examining social connectivity within institutions and community. As a model builder, Hamilton co-founded an independent African centered school, Little Maroons in 2006; later, she opened a creative incubator space- Gris Gris Lab in 2009 and designed and led the Joan Mitchell Center artist residency program in New Orleans as a consultant from 2011- 2013 and director from 2013-2018.

As the Center Director, Hamilton led the development of the two acre campus capital project using a workforce development project HyperLocal and designed the program as a place based, community centered laboratory for visual artists, curators and the creative community with the belief that imagination and creativity are paramount to creating a more equitable and socially just society. Currently, Gia is the architect of her latest projects: Afrofuture Society and Dark Matter Projects. In 2019 she became the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the New Orleans African American Museum

Hamilton received her bachelors in cultural anthropology from New York University and masters in applied anthropology from City University of New York’s Graduate Center. She is on the board of Tulane University Newcomb Museum, Alliance for Artist Communities and New Orleans Video Access Center and most recently Museum Hue. Hamilton recently received the 2018 Next City Vanguard fellowship and was nominated for the 2018 City Business Woman of Year award. Gia currently lives in New Orleans with her four sons and just completed an ethnographic memoir entitled Modern Matriarch.

Her current innovation, musings and practice can be explored by her portfolio and blog and you can stay in touch with her here.

Phebe Hayes

Dr. Phebe Archon Hayes, a native and life-long resident of Iberia Parish, is a descendant of West Africans enslaved on area plantations during the antebellum period. Several of her male ancestors, including Jean Jeanlouis, Peter Jenkins, Alphonse Manuel, Marcel Mitchel, and Bernard Hypolite fought for emancipation during the Civil War either as members of the United States Colored Infantry (formerly, the Corps d’Afrique) or the Union Navy. Dr. Hayes’ research has led her to trace her ancestors to area Attakapas district plantations that originally included parts of present-day St. Martin and St. Mary parishes.

Following a long and successful career as a professor of Communicative Disorders and as Dean of the College of General Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Dr. Hayes has emerged an important voice in Louisiana Studies and in the Acadiana community as the Founder and President of the Iberia African American Historical Society (IAAHS). Founded in 2017, the IAAHS seeks to explore, understand, and make accessible the full story of African American history and culture in Iberia Parish and rural southern Louisiana in general, with a particular focus on the often neglected contributions of African Americans to the region’s civic life. Dr. Hayes’ work has already led to numerous successes, including the creation of historic marker honoring, Dr. Emma Wakefield Paillet, Louisiana’s first black female physician.

Dr. Hayes is currently a member of several nonprofit organization boards and organizations including: The Bayou Teche Museum of New Iberia, The Vermilionville Living History Museum of Lafayette, The UL Ernest Gaines Center, The UL Roy House, and the St. Luc French Immersion Advisory Board (Arnaudville, LA). She has served as a consultant/advisor to The Shadows Along the Teche (New Iberia) and is newly appointed to the Iberia Parish Tourism Commission (2019-2020). Dr. Hayes is a member of the state-wide genealogy organization, Le Comite´ des Archives de La Louisiane. in 20016 and 20017 she organized Le Comite´s Summer African American Genealogy seminars. She arranged for the 2016 Summer seminar to be held at The Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA and the 2017 Summer seminar to be held at the UL Ernest Gaines Center. Her past board memberships include the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal School of Acadiana (2002-2005), Woman’s Foundation Inc. (2004-2010), Bayou Girl Scouts Council (1999-2002), and others.

Dr. Hayes is currently preparing manuscripts for publication about the history of African Americans in Iberia Parish, including a book of poetry and prose she is co-authoring with poet Margaret Simon on the life of Dr. Emma Wakefield. She is also working on manuscripts about the history of NECO TOWN (one of Iberia Parish’s historically Black communities settled by Black families at the end of the Civil War); and about the early Black doctors and dentists of Iberia Parish. Recently two of Dr. Hayes’ essays have been published (“Emma Wakefield-Paillet, MD: The First African American Woman in Louisiana to Earn a Medical Degree and Practice Medicine”, 64 Parishes, Fall 2019) and (“Uncovering History: Discovering the Roles of African Americans in New Iberia’s and Louisiana’s Past and Healing the Present and Future”, Acadiana Profile Magazine, Feb/March 2020).

Dianne “Gumbo Marie” Honoré

Dianne “Gumbo Marie” Honoré, a cultural activist and seventh-generation New Orleanian, grew up in her family’s legendary 6th ward Creole restaurant, Hank’s. Her upbringing along with concurrent careers in tourism and professional nursing honed her focus on exploring marginalized histories and creating truthful narratives that evoke social change and aid in healing historical trauma. A powerful maker, she successfully utilizes multi-disciplinary art, food and music experiences, and historic interpretation. Presentations and curated events include the seminar “From Slavery to Black Indians” at the Quai Branly Musee in Paris, Fr.,“From the Shackles to the Streets” exhibit, Darryl Montana’s 50th year masking exhibition and tour, the annual Allison “Big Chief” Tootie Montana Day memorial as well as events in partnership with the New Orleans French Market.

A solid believer in active participation as a form of preservation, Ms. Honoré currently masks as Big Queen of the legendary Yellow Pocahontas Hunters Black Masking Indian tribe. The tribe in which her family member and original creator of the Black Masking Indian prayer song “Indian Red,” Eugene Honoré masked as Chief in the early 1900s. She founded the Black Storyville Baby Dolls, celebrating the first masking Baby Dolls in Jim Crow era New Orleans, ca.1912, and the Amazons Benevolent Society, whose community-service work is grounded in cancer advocacy, environmental racism and healthcare disparities. She also co-founded Unheard Voices of Louisiana, focusing on amplifying marginalized voices in Louisiana history. Programs include Healing Through History, the Honoré-Destrehan legacy experience, descendant-led Unheard Voices of the German Coast tour, and the Black Storyville tour. She regularly teaches beading art through the Louisiana State Museum, Creole foodways at the New Orleans School of Cooking and the French Market.

Ms. Honoré was awarded the 2013 Recognition Award by the Louisiana Creole Research Association for Truthful Historical Storytelling and Contributions to Society, the 2018 Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame Capturing the Spirit award for her work in the community and preservation efforts.

Recently, her custom-created 2018 Mardi Gras Baby Doll regalia was purchased by the Quai Branly Musee in Paris, Fr. and is on permanent exhibit.

Ms. Honoré is in the process of completing a year-long Creative Assembly residency focused on the neighborhoods of New Orleans at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She is on the Board of Alliance Francaise New Orleans, the Historic Faubourg Treme Association as the Community Engagement Coordinator and the Tour Guides Association of Greater New Orleans as the Standards and Education Chair.

Alex Lee

Alex is an experienced researcher and award-winning genealogist, having honed his trade under the tutelage of the former archivist, Keith Fontenot. His extensive database consists of successfully identifying the formerly enslaved families in SW tracing them to their living descendants. His research interests include Slave Research, Acadian Ancestry, Creole Ancestry (including Free People of Color, FPOC), DNA Research Analysis to verify family connections, Colonial Manuscripts, Socia-economic history of Southwest Louisiana, Matriarchal Research (Mothers of the Parish), Community research on relationships between families, as well as Civil, Military and Church Records.

“I am thrilled to have Alex join our team. His experience in Louisiana Creole heritage and family history will help further our understanding of the diverse heritage of Louisiana, especially St.Landry Parish,” stated Clerk of Court, Charles Jagneaux.

Mr. Lee is the current recipient of the 2021 Diverse Heritage Award from the Louisiana Trust for Historical Preservation where he was recognized for achievements in the promotion and preservation of Louisiana’s multicultural and underserved Creole heritage. He uses his passion for genealogy and history to research underserved heritage, promoting his trade at numerous heritage festivals and genealogy workshops throughout the Acadiana parishes.

Mr. Lee provides a variety of services, including but not limited to: Lecturer/presenter at genealogy seminars, museums, universities, family gatherings, and heritage festivals; Private research and genealogy consulting through AlexGenealogy©; Family genealogy books; Family records searches; Photo digitalization; Genealogy Databases.

Alex was born in Texas and attended Beaumont Central Medical Magnet High School and Texas Southern University where he majored in music education and history. He also marched in TSU’s famed Ocean of Soul.

Monique Moss

Monique Moss is a New Orleans native, community leader and recipient of the 2020 Preservation Hall Foundation Community Engagement Grant. Join us for our next #CommunitySpotlight featuring Moss’ creative tribute to the Black, Caribbean and Native people who inhabited the city and shaped the culture from its infancy.

Moss, a dancer, choreographer, artistic director, teacher, historian and culture bearer, poses with books and offerings as she looks towards the branches of a tree located in Congo Square. Congo Square is historically documented to have been an open area outside of New Orleans where slaves were allowed to congregate on their day of rest each Sunday to sing, dance and perform with freedom of religious expression.

She incorporates research-based props in her presentations and performances that often represent historic parallels that influence New Orleans culture. Here, she lays out a bunch of bananas grown in her backyard as an offering to African ancestors, along with books and representations of revolutionaries, such as Kimpa Vita of the Republic of Congo and Malcom X, African-American civil rights leader. She also includes books on Native Americans that occupied the land before colonization, slave revolts, and thriving African civilization prior to European influence.

In addition to musical influences that came from Congo Square, Moss adds that having researched the history of New Orleans in archives around the world and having worked for years with Leon A. Waters, publisher of the reference book On to New Orleans! Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt!, one of the books pictured earlier, Congo Square also served as space for enslaved Africans in New Orleans to organize revolts against the system of slavery.

[https://salon726.com/home/photo-montage-monique-moss]

Angela Proctor

Angela Proctor is the Assistant Professor- University Archivist and Digitization Librarian with over twenty years of experience working at Southern University and A&M College. She has an undergraduate degree in Mass Communications from Southern University and A&M College and a Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from Louisiana State University, both located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is the force behind digitizing interviews compiled by John Brother Cade titled Opinions Regarding Slavery: Slave Narratives, consisting of an original manuscript collection. These narratives include reports of ex-slaves from 17 states and 1 country dated 1822-1865. She’s also responsible for digitizing formerly enslaved people living in Louisiana in the 1940s, titled The Louisiana Works Progress Administration (LWPA), and was the PI for a grant sponsored by the Social Science Research Council to interview descendants of the GU272 (Georgetown University), that had ties to Southern University. She specializes in identifying and preserving essential records that document the cultural heritage of Southern University and the community that it surrounds. She is the project administrator of several digital online collections including: The Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper; the Verla Birrell Textile and Designs (both of which are located on the Louisiana Digital Library website); and the Southern University History Online (HBCU Library Alliance Project). She’s also responsible for maintaining Southern University’s history. Most of the collections she has digitized and has made available via the Archives website.

Shearon Roberts

Dean Shearon Roberts, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Mass Communication and faculty member in African American and Diaspora Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. She is the director of Xavier’s Exponential Honors Program. She earned a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University’s Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies. She researches comparative media systems; mainstream media representations of race, gender and the developing world; Latin America and Caribbean media; and international development. She has published on the role of the media in post-disaster recovery. Her forthcoming book Media Discourse in Haiti examines the last decade in Haiti through the lens of Haiti’s media as the country recovered from the 2010 earthquake. She is co-editor of HBO’s Treme and Post-Katrina Catharsis: The Mediated Rebirth of New Orleans and co-author of Oil and Water: Media Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. She studies the impact of digital media and social movements and is the editor of the 2020 book Recasting the Disney Princess in an Era of New Media and Social Movements. She has worked as a reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean, and holds an M.M.C. from Louisiana State University and a B.A. in Mass Communication, with a double minor in Spanish and French from Dillard University in New Orleans.

Kristina Kay Robinson

Kristina Kay Robinson is a writer, curator, and visual artist born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her written, visual and curatorial practice centers and interrogates the modern and ancient connections between world communities. Robinson’s work both at home and abroad focuses on the impact of globalization, militarism, and surveillance on society and their intersections with contemporary art and pop culture. Her ongoing installation and performance art project, Republica: Temple of Color and Sound has been presented in exhibition at “Welcome to the Afrofuture” during Miami Art Week, New Museum’s residency program, Ideas City, New Orleans African American Museum and Independent Curators International’s traveling exhibition, Notes For Tomorrow. Robinson is the co-editor of Mixed Company, a collection of short fiction and visual narratives by women of color. Robinson’s curatorial endeavors include Sudanese artist, Khalid Abdel Rahman’s “A Disappearance” hosted in 2017 by the Arts Council of New Orleans and the “Matrix of Creativity: Where the River Meets the Sea” at the New Orleans African American Museum.

Her writing in various genres has appeared in Guernica,The Baffler, The Nation, The Massachusetts Review and Elle among other outlets. She is a 2019 recipient of the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism. Currently she serves as the New Orleans editor at large for the Atlanta based, Burnaway magazine.

Mona Lisa Saloy

Mona Lisa Saloy, Ph.D. Louisiana Poet Laureate (2021-2023), is an author, folklorist, Louisiana Folklife Commissioner, educator, and scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina; currently Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University; poetry books: Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Second Line Home, celebrates New Orleans Black Creole culture. Recent pubs: The Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol 33; Black FIRE!!! This Time Anthology; and in Tribes journal NYC, 2022; Persimmon journal, 2023. Her new collection Black Creole Chronicles: Poems (University of New Orleans Press 2023), choice for ONE BOOK ONE NEW ORLEANS 2024. Mona Lisa Saloy writes for those who don’t or can’t tell Black Creole cultural stories. www.monalisasaloy.com Tweet to @redbeansista

Pat Schexnayder

Patricia (Pat) Marant Schexnayder, is a native of New Orleans and long-time resident of Slidell, LA. With Ingrid Stanley she co-founded the Louisiana Creole Research Association (LA Creole) in New Orleans in 2004. LA Creole’s mission is to advance family research, provide education, and celebrate Creole culture. Pat began researching her Louisiana family history in 1992. Her research has taken her as far back as the 17th century with ancestors in colonial Montreal, New Orleans, Pointe Coupee, Iberville, St. Landry, and St. Tammany Parishes in Louisiana, the European countries of France, Belgium, and Ireland, the Caribbean region including St. Domingue and Martinique, and regions in Africa including Senegal and Nigeria. It was through extensive genealogical work that she discovered her Creole of Color ancestry. Now, after 30 years of research, she has recorded the history of her family in an unpublished work so that, in her words, her children and grandchildren will know and understand their unique and very “Louisianian” heritage.

Ibrahima Seck

Dr. Ibrahima Seck is a member of the History department of University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD), Senegal. His research is mostly devoted to the historical and cultural links between West Africa and Louisiana with a special interest for religious beliefs, music, foodways, and miscellaneous aspects of culture. Dr. Seck is now holding the position of Director of research of the Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum located in St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana. He is the author of a book on this historic site entitled Bouki fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation) Louisiana, 1750-1860. [New Orleans: UNO Press, 2014].

Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir

Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir is the Keller family endowed professor in history at Xavier University of Louisiana. She teaches courses in African American History, including Slavery and Servitude, U. S. Civil Rights Movement, and Hip Hop and Social Justice. She has worked in the field of public history and been featured on MSNBC, History News Network, has been quoted in the New York Times and published a New York Times Op-Ed article, as well as interviews by local news and radio media. She has written several articles, one of her most noted ones being published in The Journal of African-American History titled, “Nothing Is To Be Feared”: Norman C. Francis, Civil Rights Activism, And The Black Catholic Movement. She is currently working on a book under contract with LSU Press. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir has served as a member of the New Orleans Tricentennial Symposium Committee, the New Orleans Public School Board Renaming Committee, and the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail Site Review Committee. She currently serves as the Chair of the American Historical Association’s Nominations Committee and has served on their Committee on Minority Historians. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir is a board member for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Supreme Court Historic Society and currently chairs the Helis Foundation John Scott Center. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir was awarded a $500,000 Andrew W. Mellon Grant to create the African American and African Diasporic Cultural Studies Major at Xavier University of Louisiana. In addition, she serves as History Department Chair, President of Faculty Association and is the 2021 recipient of the Xavier University of Louisiana Norman C. Francis Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching.

Leon Waters

Mr. Leon August Waters is a 74 year old native of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Historian, Publisher, and Revolutionary

He wears two hats:

Mr. Waters is the board chairperson of the Louisiana Museum of African American History (LMAAH); a museum organization whose mission is to popularize the ‘hidden history’ or the ‘revolutionary history’ of African & African American history in Louisiana in several forms: lectures, publications, exhibitions, conferences, tours, and digital media platforms.

Also, Mr. Waters is the manager of a tour operation called Hidden History Tours LLC , where he conducts tours on subjects that are not well known: Black history, labor history. and women’s history. One can learn more about the tours his company offers by visiting this website: www.HiddenHistory.us

“Until the lioness or lion tells her or his own story, the story will always glorify the hunter”